by Ren Benton
She closed the bedroom door behind her. The lock engaged with a metallic twang. So she wouldn’t have to raise her voice, she waited until she reached the threshold of the bathroom to ask, “Is the water heater broken?”
“No.” He stretched out an arm and turned the shower control, silencing the rush of water. “I wasn’t about to take off my pants until I knew who’d come nibble at the bait.”
“You won’t have to worry after tonight. After seeing the mob at the hospital, I told Simone I’m sending her home.”
Once Olivia was tucked away somewhere the press couldn’t reach her, they might turn their attention here. Even if Gin did bring in private security, the glass box in which they dwelled was practically indefensible. Security could flush intruders out of the woods and have them charged with trespassing, but the lake could support a flotilla of spies with long-range lenses. Unless they crossed Bob’s property to get to the water, there wasn’t a damn thing that could be done to stop them.
Lex didn’t need the problem explained to him — he wasn’t new to the perils of stardom. “There’s no story here. We work and eat. They’ll get tired of being chewed up by ticks and mosquitoes just to get pictures of our table manners.”
“That’s not the point.” Theft of any size was a violation beyond the value of the item taken. Photographers stole pieces of their private lives, and a public that wanted to share the loot never objected to the robbery.
“I know, bear, but you need your strength for more important battles.”
The sympathy softening his voice lured her closer. His lazy posture put him at a height where she could rest her forehead against his shoulder.
His hands slid around her hips and guided her into the notch between his legs. “I could feel you not sleeping a room away.”
More likely, he could tell from the kind of day she’d had when the night would be sleepless, but sometimes it was in her best interest to gag her pedantic practicality and let him whisper romantic nonsense in her ear.
Her lips rubbed against his collarbone. “Maybe I couldn’t sleep because I felt you waiting for me.”
He breathed a laugh into her hair. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for you all my life. No wonder you’re exhausted.”
She avenged decades of insomnia with a weak, bare-toed kick to his shin. “Hurry up and tell me what you’ve been waiting for so I can give it to you and pass out.”
“I wanted you with me.” His hands smoothed her back, melting her spine so she molded against him. “Now that you’re here, I’m going to put you to bed, pile twenty blankets on you, and get frostbite warming up your feet while you catch up on all the shuteye you’ve missed.”
What a nice man. She trailed her tongue from the base of his throat up toward his ear to find out if he tasted as considerate as he behaved. “I feel very warmly toward you already.”
His fingers curved around her nape, holding her in the perfect position to nibble at the sharp line of his jaw. “Do you need help getting to sleep again?”
“If you’re willing.”
He indicated his consent by peeling off her shirt in one smooth swipe and tossing it aside.
Determined to get him naked this time, Gin returned the favor, sliding her hands between hot flesh and soft cotton and pushing up to bare the skin she’d missed last night. At the sight of his new ink, she dropped her hands and stepped back.
The left side of his torso — beginning over his heart, curving down and around his ribs — was now permanently ravaged by four gaping wounds with tattered edges.
As if he’d been mauled by a bear.
She’d told him to get a journal, but his skin was his journal. That’s why he didn’t let just anyone read it and wrote in code indecipherable to those who viewed it without the benefit of his translation.
She knew perfectly well what this message said. “God, Lex, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He seized her hand and returned it to his skin, holding it tight when she flinched like the injury was real. “I needed to be opened up. The holes were empty at first, because I was. As I fill up, I’ll add ink to remind me what’s inside.”
He always seemed to her to be bursting at the seams with energy, life, passion, fun. She couldn’t imagine how he could feel empty. All he’d chosen to fill himself with so far were piano keys stretching across the bottom of the wounds, as if all he had inside was his music.
She flexed her fingers against the mark and blinked back tears. “You’re more than this.”
“I was never as much as you thought I was.”
At that, the tears spilled over. He still thought she wanted him to be something he wasn’t. That was how she hurt him, over and over again. He drank himself to death’s door while she fumbled around for the right words to convince him he was enough just the way he was. “You give me all this credit for seeing through your bullshit, but then you act like I don’t see you at all. Either I’m right about you, or you’ve got me fooled. You can’t have it both ways.”
He thumbed the wet streaks from her cheeks. Mouth grim, he ground out, “I want you to be right.”
He swooped down and kissed her deeply, giving her fire he didn’t believe he had. She held him captive and tried to feed it back to him, fill him up so he wouldn’t feel empty anymore.
The drawstring of her pants yielded to his fingers, and the fabric slithered down her legs. She reached for his waistband, helping him shed the last barrier between them. The rough brush of his legs against hers still wasn’t close enough. She needed him wrapped in her arms and legs and buried in her body.
He deftly applied a condom, then hooked one hand behind her knee and urged it up to the edge of the counter. She followed suit with the other knee so she straddled him. She rubbed her slippery cleft along the underside of his rigid cock until he took command of her hips, lifted her, and notched the thick, round head against her entrance.
Her greed fought his patience with desperate little pulses of her hips, working her way down his shaft until he filled her completely. Finally.
She wrapped her legs around him to lock him in place and murmured against his ear, “Take me to bed.”
His breath scalded her shoulder. “My knees are too weak for that.”
She’d abdicated control by clinging to him. He took over, fingers squeezing her ass, lifting and lowering in a torturously slow mockery of thrusting. Every nerve he touched vibrated at the attention and worked its neighbors into a frenzy of anticipation.
The mirror behind him offered her a beautiful view when she glanced over his shoulder. The dark wings unfurling across his upper back and down his arms flexed as if he’d take flight. The wingtips pointed to triceps that bunched above his elbows while he lifted and lowered his burden, doing the hard work of fucking her.
Then she met her own eyes in the mirror and moaned. This was what he saw when he looked at her, dazed and soft, utterly unlike herself. She became someone else for him, less sharp, less rigid. She melted and let him mold her. That was why nothing compared to Lex — he exposed parts of her no one else knew how to access.
She buried her face against his neck rather than look at that vulnerable woman in the mirror, who looked like someone who would say reckless, impulsive words that would make later painful.
His knees strengthened enough for him to turn so she took his place on the counter. His strokes became long and deep, forcing gasps from her that he caught with his mouth, consuming every sound that escaped her disintegrating control.
When the orgasm rolled through her, he took that, too, a victory, fuel for his final thrusts. Her turn came to swallow his ragged groan.
Lips clung. Breaths mingled. The marble on which she sat became increasingly hard and cold, but she had no interest in moving if it meant losing this moment with him.
Obstacles meant nothing to Lex Fucking Perry, though. He straightened with her arms and legs still twined around him and strode with her to his bed.
Why was his so s
oft and pillowy? She sank into the mattress as if it were as insubstantial as bubbles. If she stayed for even a minute, it would be impossible to get up.
He pinned her from above. “Simone will sleep until noon. Be mine until dawn.”
His weight pressing down on her complicated her escape, so she had no choice, really, but to snuggle between him and the bubble bed. “Don’t let me oversleep.”
“The alarm is set for quarter to too-damn-early. I’ll get you to work on time.”
Within two breaths of that assurance, Gin was out cold. She didn’t stir when Lex bundled her in blankets, or when he claimed a place beside her and pulled her close.
He stayed awake to savor her breath on his skin, the weight of her head on his arm, the steady rhythm of her heart beating through her back against his palm. Even the icy impressions of her toes against his ankles were treasured.
When she’d tearfully insisted he was more, he nearly blurted, I’m a drunk. Even without a drink in almost five years, he wanted to say the words he’d lacked the courage to say when they were most true, when the truth could have changed their outcome.
Before he hit rock bottom.
Before he lost the love and support he’d been too afraid to test.
He knew there was no point playing the what if game, fantasizing about what life would be like if only he’d done then what he knew now he should have — but knowing a path went nowhere and finding one that led where he wanted to go were two different things.
He’d continue searching for the right path tomorrow. Tonight, his only destination was this bed, and he would sacrifice sleep rather than miss another minute of the time she’d given him.
9
Ethan’s morning press overview was uneventful. “No one usurped Olivia’s front-page placement overnight. It’s only a matter of time before Simone suggests you OD.”
His wholesome naïveté never ceased to amaze Gin. “Darling, that’s so yesterday. It would have to be bigger and better than an overdose.”
He laughed, then covered his mouth, eyes wide and guilty above his hands.
She clucked at him. “Gallows humor is all we got until her flight leaves, kid. When will that be, by the way?”
“I have to have her at the airport by four to make sure she leaves.”
It would be cruel and unusual punishment to trap him in a car with Simone for the trip to Denver. “She’s mine. I’ll drive her.”
“Oh, no. I won’t know peace until I see with my own two eyes she’s locked in a plane and flying away.”
It was selfish of him to deny her that peace. “Fine, but I’ll have to see video confirmation of her boarding, and none of that blurry Bigfoot crap.”
“You’re mighty mellow for this hour of the morning. Gee, I wonder why that could be.”
A ringing phone interrupted his pursuit of that mystery. He picked up the one on his desk, then blinked when the ringing continued. “Wow, someone actually dialed the house line.”
Gin stretched across her desk to reach the unused phone. “Must be an emergency.”
He swatted her hand and took possession of the receiver. “Who would call the weird number in an emergency? Watch, it will be the Callbot IRS threatening to send us to prison if we don’t give them our credit card numbers.”
She subsided into her corner with a pout. “That’s my favorite callbot, selfish.”
He answered the phone with a grin, which slowly faded as he listened to the caller. “He’s in the studio, but I’d be happy to pass on a message when he’s free. Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah. No, I am writing down every word.”
Gin looked pointedly at his hands, which were free of writing implements and nowhere near a keyboard.
“Do you want to leave your name, or will he be able to figure out the clues?” His gaze swung toward Gin. “Sorry, she’s busy, too.”
The caller’s volume increased until Ethan had to hold the handset away from his head to preserve his eardrum. Across the room, Gin heard what sounded like the shrieks of an enraged chipmunk.
Ethan’s jaw dropped in increments as the tirade went on and on. When it was over, he returned the handset to the base as if it were a live grenade. “Holy shit.”
“What was that?”
“A new number to forward to our friends in law enforcement.”
Without a rape or death threat, law enforcement wasn’t interested in harassing phone calls, and Gin warranted attention to violent threats only because she’d been attacked on their watch previously. Otherwise, they were firmly in Camp Celebrity Job Hazard.
They might not care, but Gin’s alarm bells were jangling loud and clear. “Lex got caught up in this one?”
“Somebody prints a new article every day in which he’s gushing about what a genius you are. Of course your hate club has to register a complaint against him.”
The merry band of nuts with an irrational hatred of her might have been harmless for the past decade, but she couldn’t afford to be complacent about them when they put Lex in their crosshairs.
Ethan raced across the room to block the door before she reached it. “Gin, it’s a garden-variety rant. Lex knows he’s not universally beloved. If he was, he’d be doing the whole moody rocker thing wrong.”
She shoved his arm out of her way. “If he doesn’t want to be bothered by lunatics, that should be his choice, not the default state of being in the dark.”
Ryan filtered her updates about Jeremy Fogle’s activities. He hadn’t wanted worry to distract her from writing her next screenplay. He thought because they were inseparable, he could protect her.
He hadn’t given her a chance to find out if he’d still be alive if she’d been worried enough to hire a security detail.
She wouldn’t take that choice away from Lex.
Her entrance to the studio warranted his immediate attention this time. He came out of his chair and pushed her into it. “Sit. Breathe.”
Breath whooshed into her lungs like it had been too long since her last one. Her head pounded with the change in air pressure.
Lex squatted in front of her and cupped her chin in one hand to get her focused on him. “Is it Livvy?”
She shook her head. “Ethan talked to her earlier. They’re transferring her today. She’ll be on phone silence for a week when she gets there and wanted to let us know she’s okay.”
Don’t worry about me, she’d said.
Why were the greatest sources of worry always so quick to assure there was no cause for worry?
Lex waited patiently for another explanation of her panicked flight.
She took another deep breath to replace the one she’d exhausted on Olivia. “Ethan fielded an abusive phone call. Your name was mentioned.”
His expression cleared of concern, and he shrugged. “I told a lot of idiots on the internet to go fuck themselves for being rude to you. I welcome any abuse they want to redirect toward me.”
She’d warned him against that social media rampage. He might be right. Then again, he might be catastrophically wrong. “How did they get the number for the house, though?”
“Between you, Ethan, Simone, Bob, and everyone he’s ever loaned this place to, it’s not top-secret information. Hell, it could be kids from town pranking the Hollywood elites.”
If he meant to be reassuring, he failed. “That’s even worse. If they decide to escalate to physical ‘pranks,’ they can be at the door in twenty minutes.”
“We’re good buddies with the police chief, remember? If the number’s local, we give it to him, he distributes his anti-ruckus message to someone other than us, problem solved.”
She believed Chief Raymond would act on a nuisance originating in his own town, regardless of his stance on bothersome-but-not-criminal outsiders. That certainty took the spurs out of her madly galloping heart, but the fresh reminder of vulnerability she’d lived with long enough not to think about every day left her unsettled.
Lex stood and extended a hand to her. “You’ll feel better
after we have a look.”
She’d wanted him to know about the problem, not drop everything to address it. “I’ll deal with it.”
“If Chief Raymond needs calling, I have to do it because I’m his favorite.”
She let him pull her to her feet. “Yeah, he was charmed when he learned Smartass is your native tongue, cheetah boy.”
He spanned the small of her back with his hand and guided her toward the stairs. “What really won him over is my fluency in Straight White Male. You speak it with an accent, and while you’re perfectly capable of getting your point across, it will be faster if I do it.”
Lex followed Gin back to the office, less calm inside than he’d projected for her. Following Olivia’s overdose, it occurred to him the press might descend on them. He’d hit up his contacts for recommendations for Denver-based security firms in preparation for that invasion. If there was the slightest indication this call was outside the norm, he’d have the place crawling with the most discouraging people money could buy before nightfall.
But the call might be nothing. Hoping that was the case, he lounged in the doorway of the office and casually interrogated Ethan. “Settle a bet. Is our mutual admirer local?”
Ethan checked his notes. “Nah. It’s a 215 area code.”
Lex stiffened with dread — that was home. “What’s the rest?”
Ethan rattled off five digits.
Lex supplied the last two.
Ethan held a notebook up to his forehead like a shield. “Quit reading my mind. There’s incriminating stuff in there.”
Gin leaned against the vacant desk. “Since you know the number, I gather it’s not a random nutcase.”
Of course Lex knew the number. He’d blocked it weeks ago, forcing Melanie to use other means to flood his voicemail. “Recent ex.”
Ethan gasped. “She’s so charming. Why didn’t it last?”
Gin quelled the sarcasm with a dire look. “We should probably leave her off the FBI list, in that case.”
